Serbia will be importing electricity this entire year, and during the winter

EPS must invest at least 150 million euros in order for surface mines to produce sufficient quantities of coal next year

Minister of Mining and Energy Zorana Mihajlovic says that Serbia will be importing coal and electricity until the end of this year and next winter, and announced a stabilization of lignite production in the Kolubara mine in a year and a half.

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"Serbia imports electricity every day, 10 to 17 percent of our consumption. This is partly related to the overhauls carried out by EPS (Electric Power Industry of Serbia), but also to everything that happened in the electric power system last December. There was a collapse and it takes time to take care of all of that," Mihajlovic told Tanjug.

She said that EPS must invest at least 150 million euros in order for surface mines to produce sufficient quantities of coal next year.

"We are not producing enough coal now to meet our needs. We import both electricity and coal and will certainly be importing electricity this year, but also in January and February. Our estimates are that, if everything that is needed is invested, above all in Kolubara, Serbia will be able to say in a year and a half, 'Well, now we can produce enough electricity without importing it at all'," Mihalovic stressed.

She assessed that the biggest problem with EPS was that in previous years, the mines were essentially not taken care of.

"They did not prepare everything that was needed. It's not just discovery of excavation, but preparing roads, some mines will be closed by 2024, some will be opened, so the matter is in planning. The money that is being invested now, which should be invested this year and the next, is just needed to prepare the mines so that in a year and a half they can produce as much as we need, so we are somewhere halfway, but it is absolutely impossible to get it done earlier," said the minister of energy.

She claims that Serbia will be able to count on gas from Azerbaijan when our gas interconnection route with Bulgaria from Nis to Dimitrovgrad is completed, which is supposed to happen in September 2023.

"At that moment, Serbia can have at least 40 percent of gas that will not be from the Russian Federation, and when we traveled to Azerbaijan recently we spoke precisely about that, because we are now talking about those capacities and quantities that could come to our pipeline next year," said Mihajlovic.

She added that until then, we will "continue to be dependent" on the contract that Srbijagas will sign with Gazprom for 2.2 billion cubic meters of gas a year, with a part that must be procured together with Hungary on the market and for filling underground storage.

"The first real diversification is next year, which is also a great pity, because in the previous 10 years Serbia could have finished the Nis-Dimitrovgrad five times, but it seems to me that was never a priority. Now the crisis has happened and there is realization how important it is," assessed Mihajlovic.

(Telegraf Biznis)